In their Nature paper, Harvey and colleagues showed that almost all the bird species studied are capable of both stable and unstable flight and use wing movements to shift between these modes. Highly maneuverable aircraft are designed to be unstable. This is desirable, for example, in an airliner, but not for a jet fighter. A stable aircraft will tend to return back to steady flight when perturbed (for example, getting pushed up by a wind gust). While previous studies have tended to focus on aerodynamics - how air moves around a bird - Harvey developed equations to describe birds' inertial properties, such as the center of gravity and the neutral point, where aerodynamic forces can be consistently modelled as point forces.Īircraft are typically designed to be stable or unstable. In March this year, Harvey and colleagues at the University of Michigan published a paper in Nature analyzing the flight dynamics of 22 bird species.
She recently joined the faculty at UC Davis after completing her Ph.D in aerospace engineering. Harvey continued her work on gulls as a doctoral student at the University of Michigan. "Gulls are very common and easy to find, and they're really impressive gliders," she said. Harvey began studying gulls as a master's student in zoology at the University of British Columbia, after earning her bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering.
"Birds easily perform challenging maneuvers and they're adaptable, so what exactly about their flight is most useful to implement in future aircraft?" said Christina Harvey, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Davis and lead author on the paper.
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